See What the Klingons Could Have Looked Like in ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’

If you watch the deleted scenes on the DVD for 2009's 'Star Trek,' you can see an extended sequence involving Klingons, the most iconic of 'Trek' villains. Although they were cut from the film, these scenes took a wary approach on how to depict this menacing warrior race -- their faces were completely covered up by masks.

However, the Klingons played a much larger role in this year's 'Star Trek Into Darkness,' where they were unmasked, revealing them to look, well, pretty much like how Klingons are supposed to look. However, some cool concept models reveal that director J.J. Abrams and his designers toyed around with all kinds of options before going the traditional route.

As any hardcore 'Star Trek' fan will tell you, the Klingons began life on the original series as a bunch of menacing tan dudes with crazy eyebrows and facial hair. Later, bigger budgets and more advanced make-up techniques let transformed them into menacing figures with craggy forehead ridges. The new look became instantly iconic (and an episode of 'Enterprise' was created to specifically explain why the original series Klingons looked so different).

Although the Klingons don't play a massive role in 'Star Trek Into Darkness,' J.J. Abrams treats their reveal as a big deal, teasing the audience before revealing a new Klingon design that is very much in line with how the race has looked for the past twenty years. That choice makes some of the other possible designs all the crazier -- some of the ideas that were toyed with look designed purely to give 'Trek' purists a heart attack.

We've included some of the best and craziest potential Klingon designs below. Some of them look very much in line with the final design and some of them, uh, do not. Like, at all. You can check out alternate angles and the full gallery right over here.

'Star Trek Into Darkness' hits DVD and Blu-ray on September 10, 2013.